Representation by Diane Abbott
- Date submitted
- 30 April 2024
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
Oakland’s Solar – NSIP letter I am strongly opposed to the Oakland’s Farm solar project and wish to have my views heard during the Planning process. I am in favour of new green energy and understand the important role it plays in achieving net zero, but I believe this should be generated using the most effective / efficient and least harmful methods possible. The Oakland’s Solar proposal does not achieve any of these goals. As a close neighbour of the site I will suffer significant negative impacts in multiple ways and believe the submitted documentation does not adequately reflect this. Here are some of the reasons I object to this proposal: Effectiveness of consultation • There has been inadequate publicity about the project and a lack of meaningful consultation with interested parties, both local residents and other stakeholders such as people that travel to the area for work or leisure. • The proposal has been worked on for several years by the developer, yet the only full scale public consultation was held in May 2022 before many of the details were known. At this stage it was communicated that the application would be submitted in Autumn 2022. • The statutory consultation was notified to residents through a limited leaflet drop, which occurred just before Easter and would have been easy to forget in the public and school holidays that occur at this time. The in-person events were also held in a bank-holiday week, which is less than ideal for ensuring good community engagement. • There were only three venues where copies of the SoCC information were available during the statutory consultation period, these were at libraries sited 3, 6 and 7 miles away from the development site. The closest two of these libraries are in Staffordshire, whereas the development itself is in Derbyshire – is it reasonable to assume that Derbyshire residents would visit libraries in another county? Alternative locations for sharing the SoCC documents in the villages affected were not considered. These could have been provided at the local schools, village halls, Rosliston forestry centre, shops or pubs, or through local community groups. All of which would have been more accessible to members of the public, including working people, the elderly and families residing outside the leafleted area but using the local schools. • Local village noticeboards (such as the three in Walton on Trent ) were not used to inform the community prior to the in-person events taking place, this could easily have been arranged. • The in-person consultation was centred on two venues; one in Walton on Trent and one in Rosliston. Residents in Drakelow and Coton in the Elms were left without an easily accessible venue to find out about the project. The lack of advertising meant it was unlikely they were aware that they needed to travel to the neighbouring villages. • The Walton on Trent event was held on a Friday between 1pm and 7pm – meaning that many working / commuting people would be unable to attend. The Rosliston event was for just 4 hours on a Saturday when people often have other activities planned. • The information provided at these events was lacking. Images were too small and dark to be seen easily, maps were provided without a key, there were no scaled visualisations. It was also evident that representatives at the events did not have answers to the questions raised by the public. • Taking all the points raised above – I feel that the statutory consultation was both badly publicised and did not effectively target the different types of populations affected. • I raised my concern about the poor publicity for the statutory consultation with BayWa in person at the event (and later in writing), but was told that there would be other chances to influence the process once the application had been submitted. I now find out after much research that any representations regarding the consultation process should have been made to my local council or the IPC at the time so it could be considered prior to application. As a layperson there is no way I could have known this at the time. • Since May 2022 there have been various updates to the project, but these have not been brought back to a full public consultation. • I believe the delays and changes to this project should have meant a full scale follow-up consultation was necessitated. As this was not completed, many local communities affected by the development have been excluded from the process. (Eg new residents at the Dracan housing estate, and residents in Drakelow, Stapenhill, Coton Park, Grangewood, Netherseal and Acresford who will be affected by the proposed transport routes). • In late March 2024 BayWa conducted a leaflet drop to notify of the NSIPs sign up stage (radius of coverage unknown) but this did not reference the deadline of 3rd May 2024 and again arrived just before the Easter holiday. The leaflet contained very little meaningful information, showed no visualisations or transport routes and included an out of date site map. Nor did it outline any of the possible impacts on the local community. If this leaflet was considered as an advert for the site, there is an argument that it would have fallen foul of trading standards legislation for it’s lack of balance, missing information and unsubstantiated claims. • I understand that the NSIPs consultation process was advertised in the local and national press, but after extensive searching on-line I have failed to find any record of this information. • In order to find out more information, interested parties were required to access the NSIP portal. The documentation provided on the NSIP portal is extensive and does not offer an easily accessible summary (in total there are 211 documents in no particular order). There is no way that the general public would be able to access and evaluate even a tiny proportion of the information in the time available. Six weeks is clearly not long enough to give residents and organisations sufficient time to understand the proposal and put their views forward. I strongly believe that a new consultation is required to present the latest information to the public in an accessible manner over at least 3 months; otherwise the process cannot be considered to be democratic. Site selection: • The developer fails to adequately justify the site selection. It claims that the site will have no overriding environmental constraints (eg: land use, impact on communities and safe access points) but these reasons have not been sufficiently proven. • The stated survey area for other suitable sites of only 10km is unrealistically limiting, especially coming from for a global company with offices throughout the UK. • I believe the actual reason for selecting this site is the fact that the developers had found landowners near to Drakelow substation that were willing to commence the project. • The site is on good quality farmland. Government guidance states that BMV farmland should be avoided. There are multiple sites nearby (such as the old Drakelow Power Station) that would be more suitable for solar power generation (one site is already running and a new one is in planning.) The fact that these sites were not available for BayWa to develop is not good enough justification to use BMV land. • There have also been many large warehouses developments built in the local area (within 12km of the proposed site) these could also have been identified as suitable locations for a rooftop solar development. Or the developer could have investigated sites in proximity to other sub-stations. Timescale • The proposed 40 year running period for the site represents a generational change and should not be considered temporary. • Once farming and farmers are displaced from the site, they are unlikely to return. Loss of BMV land • When evaluating the loss of BMV to food production, the Agriculture and Soil report considers the difference between food production from the BMV land on this site and a baseline level of production from a site that has poorer ground. This is misleading as there is no evidence that another alternative site with the same acreage will suddenly commence production once this site is lost to agriculture. Therefore the full loss of production of the site should be considered. • Much of the site will be impacted by permanent changes, such as the concrete base for the BESS and under the solar panels that cannot be piled, and the various access routes across the site. This proportion of the site should be quantified so it can be shown how much will never be returned to agricultural usage. • The heavy equipment being used on site will likely damage the soil structure irreversibly, especially if construction continues in wet conditions when farmers would normally keep off the land. If the site is to be returned to agriculture, then there needs to be strict conditions for working only when the ground conditions are suitable. Visual impacts • The site has a rolling topography, which means that effective screening of the panels and other related infrastructure for much of the site is not possible. It is acknowledged that there will be significantly negative long term impacts from the development. • The visual receptor points chosen by BayWa do not adequately reflect what will be seen from the key local viewpoints and this is noted in the assessment itself. “There are a few receptors that do not consider a representative viewpoint”. Other – better sited receptors should have been considered. It is not clear whether inspectors approving the chosen vantage points were familiar with, or visited the site before making their judgement. • None of the visualisations provided show any evidence of being calibrated to represent the realistic heights of the solar panels or other infrastructure. (This can be demonstrated at a later date if required – but metal gates are typically 1.1m tall and this can be used as a rough calibration measure). • Similarly the sizes of trees shown in the mitigation planting have been exaggerated meaning that the long term views are also misleading. • None of the visualisations include the 3m CCTV towers around the site, and many fail to show the various site compounds and transformer buildings etc. • There were no scaled visualisations shown during the consultation phase, thereby denying the public the ability to judge for themselves the impact of this proposed development. • It is not immediately clear that the latest visualisations are not to scale (indeed the reports state otherwise), therefore these images are misleading to the general public and to the examining committee. • New receptors should be identified and modelled to scale before the landscape visual assessment is reviewed. These revised documents should be subject to public consultation. • The Landscape Visual Amenity Assessment specifies that a High Magnitude of change in visual amenity is defined as “The property is affected by a large change to views/ visual amenity in the round. For example, the Proposed Development will be a key/defining element in the main view from the property and garden, or will be prominent in views from multiple aspects (including the main aspect of the property).” By this criterion many of the evaluated properties (eg Lad’s Grave, Walton Hill Farm etc) should be classified as suffering a “high” magnitude of change in year 1, and yet the report only rates them as “medium”. This is subjective and an impartial review should be undertaken to reassess the impacts on local properties through site visits. • The Landscape Visual Amenity Assessment includes factual errors. [Redacted] This also raises the question of whether important consultation material was provided to the correct recipients. • The impact of light pollution during construction and operation has not been adequately assessed for how it will affect local residents or the ecology of the site. Ecological effects • The development will have a major negative impact on the flora and fauna of the site. Hedgerows will be dug up and trees uprooted. The main transport road to be created through the site is along the path of a stream / woodland and will cause the worst possible environmental effects along a vital wildlife corridor – this access route should have been re-sited to cause less ecological damage. Most of the wildlife on site (badgers, foxes, deer, otter etc) will be displaced (or worse) during construction and larger mammals will have no means of re-entering the site once the fences have gone up. Red listed bird species present on the site such as skylark and lapwing will lose valuable breeding grounds. • There is no mention of how the Ecological Emergency declared by South Derbyshire District Council in September 2023 affects the development – and what additional actions will be taken to mitigate the ecological impact of the site. • The biodiversity net gain metric has used an old format. Biodiversity Metric 4.0 was published in March 2023. The first draft BNG report for this site was prepared in April 2023 and has been revisited several times since then. I believe that due to the timeframe to develop and approve this project, that the latest BNG legislation metrics should be used as a baseline. • The BNG improvements rely heavily on the additional 47 Hectares of “neutral semi improved grassland” that will be planted around the arrays. In determining this, the marking criteria assumes “Wildflowers, sedges and indicator species for the specific grassland habitat type are very clearly and easily visible throughout the sward.” This is a bold assertion considering that the long term parcels of similar grassland on site currently do not meet this criterion despite having multiple different species reported. It will also be difficult to establish a good wildflower mix on previously enriched land that has only just been moved out of arable use. It is therefore likely that the newly planted areas both around and under the solar arrays will remain as “poor” for many years to come. • The newly planted hedgerows have been assumed to achieve “pass” marks for being both taller than and wider than 1.5m, for no canopy gaps and for no gaps between the ground and the base of the canopy. Thereby scoring higher than many of the established hedgerows on site. None of these thresholds can be met by a newly planted row of whips. Also, the assumption that “Plant species indicative of nutrient enrichment of soils dominate 90dBA and is sited less than 500m from local properties. It therefore unlikely that the noise impacts on nearby receptors will be “negligible” as claimed. • The noise document says that string inverters will be sited as far from receptors as possible. This is clearly not the case for the string inverters near to properties in Rosliston, and at Lad’s Grave. To improve attenuation, the inverters should be positioned in the middle of the solar fields, rather than at the boundaries close to receptors. • Actual noise levels for much of the operational equipment remains unknown and multiple approximations and assumptions have been made throughout the document. As a result, the proposed operational sound mapping is pure speculation and I don’t believe any meaningful conclusions of how residents will be affected can be drawn. Nevertheless, if the measured baseline levels are taken, then it can be shown that the noise on site will exceed the current nighttime LAOEL thresholds of 5dB over baseline for many of the properties. • More information is required on the type of equipment and levels of noise that will be generated on-site. • Referring to Appendix 6.1 Section 11.136. The noise report fails to add a sufficient modifier for the tonal noise source from the equipment (inverter and transformer hum will be noticeably tonal) which should result in a 5dB penalty. The report claims that it is only the transformers that will have a tonal quality, but in reality the data simply isn’t available to confirm this. • There is also the expectation of a 3dB (or higher) modifier for acoustic features such as a whine, hiss or screech (again, refer to the MID for BS4142). This modifier this has not been applied despite it being well known that inverters and transformers can produce an unpleasant high pitched noise. • I’d also like to see an assessment on how low frequency noise from the site may impact neighbours. • An independent report should be prepared to ensure that noise impacts are properly and impartially assessed using the appropriate standards. • On the basis of this revised noise report, the developer should be expected to provide sound attenuated equipment, acoustic screening and other methods to minimise the impact on all nearby properties. There should also be provisions to check emitted noise levels once the site is running and to ensure that the claimed thresholds are met and enforced. Glint and Glare • The glint and glare report desk study shows that many properties will be affected for months of the year, but does not see this as a significant negative effect (the assessment criteria is remarkably lenient). The threshold used by this report is that reflection must last for more than 3 months of the year and more than an hour a day to be considered problematic – this is way in excess of typical industry standards which tend to consider impacts of over 30 hours a year or 30 minutes a day as requiring mitigation. • Multiple properties in Rosliston will suffer glint and glare between 6pm and 6.30pm from April to October. To consider that this will cause only a low level of nuisance that will not require mitigation is frankly ridiculous. • Glint and glare can cause problems for residents where it is visible from ground level or from upstairs, a fact dismissed by the report. • Desk studies for glint and glare have not been backed up by sufficient field surveys to clarify if the site can be seen from certain locations. Not all of the graphs for glint and glare are shown in the report meaning that affected residents cannot assess the level of nuisance they will be subjected to. My own property has been excluded from the tabular results despite the fact that the submitted zones of visibility seem to affect the house (see fig i27). The fact that the site was visible from multiple windows in my house was pointed out during the statutory consultation, but this has been ignored. • There is no consideration of the intensity of reflection for dwellings and local transport network receptors (as required by The National Policy Statement for Renewable Energy Infrastructure (EN 3)11 section 2.10.104. • The glint and glare study uses multiple flawed assumptions. For instance, it uses the midpoint of the solar panels as the modelled reflective surface height (1.75m) rather than the maximum height of the solar panels (2.7m). This massively underestimates the glint and glare effects for all local residents and road users as it ignores the most visible top half of the panels. • Nor does the report consider that the solar panel frames will be bare metal (aluminium or steel) and therefore over ten times more reflective than the solar panel themselves (as noted in the report itself), this should be factored into the relative reflective nature of the site as a whole. (As per The National Policy Statement for Renewable Energy Infrastructure (EN 3)11 section 2.10.106) • The report only considers receptors within 1km of the site, in reality the panels will be visible from a much greater distance. Indeed the assessment on glint and glare for local airfields requires an assessment distance of 10km. • The glint and glare survey also reduces the impact on a receptor based on the distance of separation. However, in previous reports, Pager Power have stated “ From a technical perspective, there is no maximum distance for potential reflections.” Therefore, if glint and glare is possible at a receptor, it should not be assumed to be minimal based on distances of less than 1km. • These multiple flawed assumptions mean that the majority of the conclusions drawn by the report are meaningless. An impartial assessment of the Glint and Glare report should be compiled for consideration. • Long portions of the road network will be protected from glint and glare by “temporary” plastic screening for 10 years whilst hedgerows grow up – as well as being unsightly, this will produce a lot of plastic waste going into the local environment as it degrades. Once the glint and glare report is altered to review the maximum height of the solar panels, this could extend to other roads in the local area. A better solution would be to delay siting solar panels in these high risk areas until the environmental screening has grown up – or to reduce the overall size of the site. There should also be consideration as to applying protective coatings to the panels, or to changing the angle of orientation if these also reduce glint and glare effects. Flooding • The impact of potential surface water flooding from the site has not been adequately assessed or mitigated – nor considered as a risk from future environmental change. Several roads around the site already suffer from surface water flooding for months of the year, sometimes becoming impassable to traffic (this was highlighted during consultation). This flooding will only be compounded by the development of the site and will require mitigation. Battery Storage risks • I am concerned about the siting of the Battery Storage facility and how it will be reached in the event of an accident or fire. Access to the site during operation will be from Coton Road which is a narrow and winding country road. I do not think the response time to any emergency reported on site will be adequate due to the access constraints of the local road network. Consideration must also be made about storing the vast amounts of contaminated water in the event of a fire so that it does not enter the environment or escape into the river Trent. • The potential fire risks of the battery storage facility were not made clear at the time of the statutory consultation. • Pollution mitigation plans in the event of a battery fire must be fully understood, either from smoke, noxious gases, water or ground contamination. Working hours • I object to the extended working hours for the proposed site. Working time in the week is planned between 7am and 7pm, with 1 hour before and after for start-up and wind-down operations (so 6am to 8pm); this is well outside the accepted norm for daytime working which is 8am to 6pm. Similarly weekend working hours exceed those normally specified for construction projects. This will cause great disturbance to local residents with little respite. Decommissioning and reinstatement • The documentation claims that after decommissioning the site will be capable of being returned to agriculture. I believe that in reality the majority of the changes to the site will be permanent and hard to mitigate. There are multiple access roads across the site that will compact the soil and make it unusable for farming. The concrete foundations and various other site infrastructure requirements are also likely to be permanent and the piling of the solar panels will impact land drains. • Provision needs to be made to ensure the site will be reinstated to it’s former agricultural status even in the event of failure of the business or change of landlord etc. There cannot be the risk of a defunct site being left in situ if there are insufficient funds or it is not profitable to remove the solar equipment. Local economy • The solar farm will negatively impact the local economy. The significantly reduced amenity of the area will have a negative impact on tourism in the wider area. Walkers and cyclists will avoid the area. It is highly likely that there will be fewer jobs created during the operation of the site than are currently supported by the farming business. • The documentation suggests that a dairy herd can continue to be farmed, but I do not believe that this will be financially viable and so farming jobs will be lost. • The reports also suggested that some limited sheep grazing may be used on site, but this is more as a form of green-washing (to suggest the land is not lost to agriculture) than as an economically viable business. In summary • Overall the development of the site will industrialise a tranquil and pleasing rural setting, where other more suitable sites could be found. It is unsuited to the location and will cause substantial harms to the environment and local communities. The industrialising effect on the surroundings cannot be sufficiently mitigated and therefore the project should not go ahead in this area. • Many of the technical reports within the Environmental Statement are biased towards the development. There is an underlying theme of the baseline conditions being evaluated conservatively whilst the analysis of proposed future effects have been assessed in a very optimistic light. Overall it is certainly a case of BayWa “marking their own homework.” I hope that the forthcoming planning investigation will look deeper into these issues (and many more) and will determine that this proposed development is not suitable for the site in question. Yours faithfully Diane Abbott